Newsweek: Activists are fighting back against the “artwashing” gentrification of Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights neighborhood

From Newsweek (May 21, 2017):

“The surprising thing about Boyle Heights is that the neighborhood’s supposed destroyers are not the builders and sellers of “yuppie flats,” developers bearing plans for glass towers, real estate agents stoking hype about this, right here, being the next, next thing. For the most part, those moneyed interests have watched this battle from the safe remove of the West Side, as activists target an unlikely foe: artists.

“Defend Boyle Heights has targeted 10 new art galleries on South Anderson Street, a formerly industrial strip along the desolate eastern bank of the Los Angeles River. Activists say the galleries are a proxy for corporate interests, especially those of high-end real estate. After the galleries will come the coffee shops and bars, and after that, the restaurants that serve bacon in cocktails.[…] The above process is known as artwashing, which has come to widely describe displacement efforts in which the artistic community is tacitly complicit.”